


rare, without love

by templemarker



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 07:48:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18616291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templemarker/pseuds/templemarker
Summary: When Julian first sent Garak a message, he didn't expect much; Garak surely was engrossed in managing the large-scale devastation on Cardassia Prime, and though Julian firmly believe Garak was fond of him -- affectionate, even -- he expected Garak to reply when he had a free moment to spare, at his leisure. It was a pleasant surprise to find a reply instead the very next day.





	rare, without love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flashforeward](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashforeward/gifts).



> Please note this is consonant with the full series canon, but not the novels or extended universe. The extended universe, if you will allow a phrase, is a four-alarm dumpster fire; let us believe we can give Julian and Garak a far better future than that.

It wasn't as though they never spoke -- there was certainly a communications delay, as all real-time contact was limited to priority communiques given the number of communications satellites which had been destroyed in Cardassia's orbit and systems. But messages did regularly go and come again, with no more significant delay than any exchange between a planet and a starship--or starbase. 

When Julian first sent Garak a message, he didn't expect much; Garak surely was engrossed in managing the large-scale devastation on Cardassia Prime, and though Julian firmly believe Garak was fond of him -- affectionate, even -- he expected Garak to reply when he had a free moment to spare, at his leisure. It was a pleasant surprise to find a reply instead the very next day, which was about the time delay others on the station and on Bajor were experiencing for their own non-emergent communications. 

Julian had enquired about Garak's health -- with a wry line about how he was a doctor, after all, and one not very good at giving up his patients -- and how things were going in Cardassia's crisis management and restoration. He gave a few lines about his own life, an interesting case of a Bolian flu variant that had required some novel treatment vectors, a review of the new restaurant open on the observation deck and Quark's petty complaints about it. 

At the end, bearing in mind the suggested time guideline for non-priority messages to Cardassia, Julian hesitated barely a moment and said, "I've nearly finished with a book that I think you might enjoy -- or at least find interesting. It's a Romulan novel recently translated by the xxx, made available for the first time, legally anyway, through the Federation Universal Library. I've attached a copy, should you have some time to relax. It's something of a, well, a mystery is the closest I could call it, and almost but not quite a murder mystery at that. I've found the protagonist to be singularly terrifying but nonetheless, I've been nearly glued to my PADD every spare moment I've had to finish reading it. If you do have the opportunity to do so, I would very much enjoy hearing your thought." Julian paused a moment, before continuing, "I miss our lunchtime conversations, Garak. You are a most compelling conversation partner, one I find impossible to replace." Julian fell silent a moment more. "Take care, my friend. I wish you well."

He ended the message, packaged it with the book attachment and encrypted it in the fashion Garak had taught him -- as if it were a game, a code, but Julian knew now how very serious Garak took his own security. It took a moment more to compress it and add it to the outgoing communications queue; it would probably arrive at the Cardassian system tomorrow morning, for the station. Julian checked; it would be late afternoon on Cardassia Prime. Julian tapped his console twice with his palm, contemplative, before standing and grabbing his PADD. Stopping to pour a glass of kanar and tonic -- he never, ever admitted to Garak that he preferred to cut kanar with the tang of quinine and soda -- he was determined to get through this chapter before he needed to turn in.

**§§§§§**

To Julian's pleasant surprise, there was a message only 38 universal hours later. Barely thinking, he did the math -- Garak must have viewed it relatively promptly once it arrived in Cardassia's systems; he probably had priority access, of course he did. But equally he must have begun his response quite soon after Julian's message had been viewed, for it to have made it into the following communications queue from Cardassia Prime, which was on a significant delay and overburdened with messages it did not have the capacity to process with so few devices left standing.

Unfortunately Julian was mid-shift when the notification of Garak's message landed on his PADD; and after finding his young medical assistant Priam spending more time chatting with their friend on the station's local messaging server than attending to their duties, he felt he should really model better workplace behavior. So while Julian did acknowledge the notification, it was with an irritated internal sigh that he otherwise ignored Garak's message, instead returning to the chart reviews awaiting him before the infirmary opened that afternoon. 

It seemed as though the shift would never end; Julian found he was drumming his fingers at his desk, clearing the infirmary's task queue as he always did before he left for the day. He had 56 hours off, a fairly recent innovation due to the residency of a Bajoran physician fresh from Bajor's recently re-established medical school. It had taken many years for the planet to recover sufficiently that it could support its own practical graduate schooling; in the way of Bajorans, they had prioritized the reinstatement of their theological seminaries, philosophical programmes, and military academies, but had sent their prospective physicians off-world to train. 

Now that at least one medical school had sufficiently recovered enough to see one class through its programme, Julian had been happy to supervise the residency of one of their graduates, as well as three nursing students completing their practicals in apprenticeship alongside the infirmary's excellent, skilled nurses; and a rotating six-week program of medical students specifically interested in non-Bajoran physiology. This meant that the burden -- though never entirely overwhelming, at least not for Julian's particular processing speed -- of the infirmary was finally shared more evenly amongst the staff. While Julian had always been intentional about staffing his medical department with initially a sufficient, and then an efficient, complement of nurses and medical personnel, he had been able to get by with support from Bajor's aging clinicians, the occasional fellow from Starfleet Medical, and the semi-frequent exchange of personnel and resources from Starfleet ships stationed at Deep Space Nine for repairs, replenishing, and, during the war, military posture. 

Perhaps that was why Julian felt so restless. He certainly had more free time than ever before, as CMO. And yet, so few individuals to spend that time with. He fiercely missed Miles and his family. 

He deeply missed Garak.

**§§§§§**

Finally back at his quarters, Julian shrugged out of his uniform coat and tugged off his boots, rolling up the shirtsleeves of his blacks and digging his toes into the plush carpet Keiko had sent him from Earth. Running a hand through his hair, noting wryly the silvery threads amongst the black, he poured himself a kanar and tonic and leaned back, pressing the indicator of Garak's message with a sip.

Garak looked well, if a little ragged around the edges; Julian wondered if anyone would notice but him. The room Garak sat in was pleasant, in that bland Cardassian fashion that had far more to do with texture than color. There was a fabric hanging on the wall behind him, a stormy blue that looked incandescent against the pearl grey colours of Garak's walls. Julian ached, for a moment, that he could not touch the fabric in person. 

"My dear doctor," Garak began, warmth in his voice and something betraying a deep weariness. "I was surprised and pleased to receive your message; I had thought you too attendant to your duties on Terok Nor to find the time to maintain our correspondence. Yet, as you well know, 'The weeping _ktralk_ calls out to no being; the cunning _ktralk_ sings its delicacies to its teeth.'"

Julian laughed, quiet in the familiar hum of the station's systems. How he had hated that book of proverbs! Garak had insisted they read it not once, but twice, saying its true depth could only be measured on a second reading. Julian had fought back with Terry Pratchett, compiling ten books into a single volume and conveying with utter sincerity that they were merely chapters with sub-chapters. 

He didn't think Garak believed a word out of his mouth, but they still bickered their way through every novel. 

"I shall tell you in sum the goings-on here on Cardassia Prime, though I cannot imagine truly would find it intriguing; my days are filled with repetition and in-fighting, and not the enjoyable sort that requires one's wits to resolve."However, first I must begin to discuss this absurd text you have sent me. My dear Julian, you cannot mean to tell me that you are _eager_ to consume this execrable drivel? We do not speak for months, and you send this to me. Have you learned nothing at all? First, this protagonist, if we may even call this being by such a useful role--"

Julian laughed aloud, pausing the message to do so. It almost hurt, his chest aching with it as he ran a hand down his face. Oh, how he had missed this; how he had missed Garak. It felt as though his world had been as bland as Garak's walls, but with only the beginning of this message bright colour had re-entered his field of vision. 

As his laughter subsided, he rested his head in his palm, suddenly pensive. That was not how he viewed his life, was it? 

Surely he didn't find so little joy in being on Deep Space Nine. He was certain he would have noticed, had his world become so...mundane. 

Another sip of kanar shook him free of the thought; despite years of drinking it, in all its varietals, kanar never ceased to be -- bracing, at a minimum, and actively broncho-constricting at its worst. He continued the message, sitting back once again, raking his eyes over every detail of his friend.

**§§§§§**

Julian had been exchanging messages with Garak for several weeks before a text notification appeared on his PADD during his morning tea break. It was from Garak -- unusual, as they had been communicating via video messaging to date. "Skyping," his grandmother called it, an archaic term that saw a revitalization in the 23rd century when the Klingons syncretized the slang with their own word for video communication. Julian still found himself calling it skyping occasionally, to the vexation of Jake Sisko and nearly every Terran born after 2351.

A text notification was much less obvious than video, and Julian glanced around; he was still determined to make sure Priam had every reason to stay on task in their work, and fortunately they appeared to be doing so, sorting out varying patient items to be returned or recycled. 

_My dear doctor_ , began the message, and Julian squashed down a smile:

> I am pleased to report that the Ministry of Reconstruction has finally resolved their internecine squabbles over kelp taxation from a century ago -- you may recall my accounting of that particular compelling episode in an earlier message -- and the intra-quadrant communications satellite grid, which had been sitting in orbit inert for the last forty-eight cycles, finally has been brought online.

> While I do not in any way wish to transfer our messages solely to this text-based format, it may prove a fruitful way to discourse more swiftly; the system is quite state-of-the-art, as the Ministry of Reconstruction took the opportunity to partner with your Starfleet's Corps of Engineers, who were eager to implement their experimental prototype. Interestingly, Second Minister Depal, who was nominally in charge of the operation, found suddenly that she was much more amenable to completing the necessary paperwork for implementation. Perhaps the recent appearance of four crates of rations at her residence, and the subsequent public embarrassment of evident bribery in the face of Central Command's austerity measures, contributed to her motivation. I say public embarrassment, but in truth it was really only three guls and the First Minister of Reconstruction; certainly I only heard about it through a certain...word of mouth.

_I'll just bet you did_ , Julian thought wryly.

> Idle gossip aside, I am pleased that the prototype system is operational and appears to be working well within normal parameters; as you know, this will be the first time the Cardassian system as a whole will regain access to near-instantaneous communication since the Dominion and its allies nearly razed the Union to the ground. It has been many hundreds of cycles, and perhaps nothing has done more to make the Union's decimation more clear to its citizens than isolation from the rest of the galaxy. Though public communications stations were made available, general access was provided only on a perpetual lottery, and even so communications might take several cycles to advance in the queue for delivery.

> I take few privileges in my position within the Ministry of Reconstruction -- and no, my Julian, I will not disclose any rank that may have been applied to me, so you may cease asking; I remain a humble citizen now as I ever was aboard Terok Nor -- but I will admit that continual priority access to the previous communications system was one I have elected to enjoy.

> It is in that spirit that I reach out to you via this more widely accessible system -- do not cease your entertaining and much-anticipated messages, Julian. I will rebuke you with great inventiveness should you do so. But perhaps, alongside those messages, we can communicate more readily through this medium. I have never found you at a loss for words, my dearest doctor.

Julian was alarmed to find he was blushing, slightly; a hand to his cheek confirmed it. Standing and tucking his PADD away -- being sure to reactivate the password protection -- he cleared his throat and called over his shoulder to Priam and Amercyn, the head nurse on duty, "I'm going to step into the Box for a moment -- notify me when the next patient has been roomed." He headed for the cryo-containment unit to their cheery assents, not looking back; the moment the door snicked shut behind him he let out a long breath and set his heated face against a terrifically frigid shelf.

"How does he do that," Julian muttered under his breath. "He didn't even say anything with particular innuendo! He didn't record any audio! How on terra firma does he..."

It took some time before Julian felt comfortable to leave the Box; fortunately, his next patient was a few minutes late, so Julian was able to collect himself and proceed with his day, studiously pretending he wasn't composing a reply to his guileless tailor in return.

**§§§§§**

It was only when Odo said something that Julian realized just how much time he had been devoting to his PADD; that is, composing messages to Garak.

"Have you been unwell, Dr. Bashir?" Odo asked in his polite fashion that sounded as though he were ready to interrogate you ruthlessly. 

"Pardon?" Julian said, looking up from his PADD; damn, his cappuccino must have gone cold again, the foam did not look promising. "Unwell? No, Odo, I am quite fine, thank you. Why do you ask?"

Odo considered him a moment; every so often Julian truly realized the extent to which Odo must perceive, with all his strange and wonderful sensory organs, the many infinite things going on at the station at any given time. 

"You haven't been dining on the Promenade; your staff and patients report you seem distracted and unusually introspective; you appear to be engrossed in your PADD as if occupied with research; and Quark is displeased that you haven't been applying your credits towards the holosuite schedule." Odo crossed his arms, an interesting affectation he seemed to have copied from Kira over the years. 

"I see," Julian said faintly. "I hadn't realized anyone paid such close attention to my comings and goings. How...interesting."

Odo merely gave the deep _hrrm_ he so typically offered in place of a response. 

"I have been preoccupied, I suppose," Julian said carefully; of the many and myriad lessons he had learned in his decade on Deep Space Nine, hedging one's responses was the most critical for day to day. The enclosed environment -- for all that it routinely housed several thousand beings -- was an unrelenting miasma of gossip and minor intrigue. Disclose anything in public, and without a doubt it would be circulated station-wide by the end of the cycle. 

Odo _hrrmed_ again, this time a bit pointedly; it was clear Julian would have to satisfy his, if not curiosity than certainly Odo's questioning. 

"I have been catching up with an old friend," he temporized. "It has been some time since we spoke, and we're finding much to talk about. I am perfectly well, only otherwise engaged."

Odo looked at him for a long moment, and Julian was once again filled with a longing to know whether his eyes were, in fact, optic nerve sensors or merely excellent facsimiles for Odo's more atypical perceptive biology. He expected he would never learn one way or another.

"Very well," Odo said, with his strange mixture of grudging acknowledgment and gruff approval. "I have no further inquiries. Good evening, Doctor."

"Good night, Odo," Julian said, both amused and bemused simultaneously; oh, for goodness sake! Had he really been so absorbed in his evidently infinite conversation with Garak that he sufficiently disarmed himself to the point that _Odo_ felt compelled to check up on him? 

Not that, by any means, Odo was anything less than a compassionate and thoughtful being -- overlaid with a reserved authority and general bemusement with the antics the solids around him got up to. 

All those decades of hypervigilance, Julian thought on a sigh, thrown asunder by a single conversation with a singular Cardassian. 

An unexpected thought occurred to him -- were he and Garak talking more? More frequently, at greater length, with fewer interludes between conversations? They spoke regularly when Garak resided on the station, and of course met for lunch nearly every week (barring complications). 

A chirrup from his PADD immediately drew his attention; Garak had replied to his last communique, and not twenty standard minutes had passed. Julian stared at the notification without opening the message and downed his cooled cappuccino with a grimace. 

Standing to leave the replimat, Julian tucked his PADD into his jacket pocket, grabbing his mug for the recycler near the entrance. As he walked, he took his surroundings in deliberately, all familiar after a decade spent on Deep Space Nine. A decade -- he hadn't planned on it in the beginning, he'd thought after six or seven years he'd take a transfer or promotion to a starship, perhaps one of the deep-space exploration vessels like the USS _Voyager_. That became less appealing once the disappearance of _Voyager_ became widely known -- Julian remained keen to dig into the challenges medical care and research presented at the edges of Federation space, but he felt rather strongly about knowing where that edge was. 

The Promenade, he observed, had changed a great deal over the years. It could hardly have done otherwise, in the transfer from Cardassian to Starfleet to Bajoran-operated Federation control. Recalling the half-empty retail spaces and damaged observation areas, it remarkable how much more settled and welcoming the Promenade was to both the station's residents and its many frequent guests. 

Julian, unsettled, realized as he neared his quarters that everything felt -- clean. Safe. Predictable. Not that there was anything wrong with that -- the Bajorans certainly had earned a flourishing, attractive space station after all they had lost to it -- but Julian hadn't quite grasped until now how...boring it was. 

No, not boring. That was unfair. It was perhaps unexciting, after so many years under Captain Sisko's weathered eye; and while Julian would not in any fashion consider the Dominion War cause for excitement, his day to day in the infirmary and on the station had become -- peaceful. 

He chuckled to himself, applying his biometrics to the entry of his quarters. What sort of being eschewed the peaceful? 

Toeing off his shoes, discarding his jacket on a chair, Julian crawled onto his couch, tucking pillows behind him and tugging a blanket over his feet. "Computer, lower temperature three degrees and dim the lights to 70%." The computer acknowledged his request and complied; Julian relaxed back into the pillows and raised his PADD to eye level. 

_My dearest Julian_ , Garak began, _it is perfectly obvious that every opinion you have elected to share with me regarding the so-called "perfect form" of poetry your homeworld named 'haiku' is nothing more than the philosophical grandstanding of an adolescent Klingon..."_

Julian laughed beneath his breath, biting his lip as he scrolled through Garak's message. 

__

**§§§§§**

It had been a hellacious day in the infirmary; well, Julian called it a day, when in truth it had been something like 29 standard hours straight attempting to treat an outbreak of Fillorian measles that had mutated, arriving on the crew of a cargo cruiser passing through and laying out twelve school-age Bajoran children and three Ferengi.

The complaining and tears were enough to drive Julian to the very same himself, but he and his team pushed through the strain; he was weary but pleased that each of his patients was treated and stable, the majority of them showing clear signs of recovery. 

He intended to stumble directly into his shower and then fall flat into bed, but a mental twitch kept snagging him until he went to his console, shoes flung haphazardly behind him and uniform migrating to the floor. There were seven new messages awaiting him, one the regular communique from his parents to which he responded by cautious rote; two from Starfleet Medical, the first asking for the histology from the outbreak, and the second a pointed reminder from his former advisor that, no matter how little Julian cared for it, he really must submit his abstract for presentation at the next year's SFMED conference; one from Miles with several archived video attachments -- Julian always looked forward to seeing how the children had grown; and three from Garak. 

Julian didn't try to fool himself otherwise: he looked at Garak's first.

  * **_RE: RE: If you make me read Legate Hadlevar again I'm sending Vol. II of Discworld_**
  * **_FWD: CU Ministry of Health-UFP Relief Liaison SFMED SFO-5 INTERNAL_**
  * **_My dear doctor, I do insist you reply at your immediate convenience..._**



Julian rubbed his eyes, and selected the last of the messages; Garak appeared on screen, looking as serene as he ever did, which Julian now understood was never very serene at all. 

"My dear," Garak said, words short but voice kind, "our mutual friend Odo was kind enough to inform me of your current work conflagration; I can only imagine the difficulty. Yet I find it not difficult at all to imagine you, Julian, barely standing on your feet yet continuing to work with little regard to your own welfare." He paused, mouth twitching downward slightly; Julian nearly thought he'd imagined it. 

"We both know you may possess the _capability_ to carry on without rest," Garak said delicately but with clear significance; Julian sighed. And this man was a spy. 

"However, I really must question the real value of your intelligence if you cannot see how crucial care for yourself is to the work you elect to do. Truly, my dear, there are times when you bear such exceptional indifference towards your person that I have come to believe you must delegate the task to someone else.

"Julian," Garak said seriously, and Julian opened his eyes, having shut them without awareness. "I must insist that you take some time off. Go to Bajor, go to Risa, go _somewhere_ , before you spend all the coin of your heart on a vocation which will only beggar you further. 

"Rest," said Garak, firmly, "we are both aware you have viewed this message before caring for yourself in any meaningful way. Leave your inbox for tomorrow. Rest now; tomorrow is another day. And if you don't submit your request for leave," he continued, a rumbling burr of warning, "you may trust that I shall know and submit it on your behalf. You may not like where I send you, Julian, but I assure you that it will demand full attention to the care of your personal welfare."

Julian groaned; it was of course true, but Julian could barely think let alone craft a smart reply. 

"My dear," Garak said, his voice lower, as if he had leaned towards his desk, "sleep. I will be waiting for you when you wake."

The message ended, and Julian buried his head in his arms. A moment later, he jumped at Garak's voice: "I am entirely serious, Julian. Go to bed. Now."

"Fine," Julian muttered to the now -- definitely -- completed message. He stumbled off to bed, a trail of clothes left behind him.

**§§§§§**

>   
>  **Details of leave request (location by duration, secondary contact information, address of nearest Starfleet-enabled communications array):**  
> 

Julian's fingers hovered over the keypad, arrested in thought. While he didn't want to make the journey all the way back to Earth, the thought of visiting one of Earth's colonies did appeal; perhaps Okanagan -- there was a passenger ship that stopped there once a month, easy to join if he took the Federation shuttle to Starbase 762. Bajor would be closer, of course, and he had been encouraged more than once to check out the Illerioe Rainforest by his colleagues. 

His eyes flicked from the open leave request form to his remaining message queue. He kept returning to Garak's un-annotated forwarded announcement: **_FWD: CU Ministry of Health-UFP Relief Liaison SFMED SFO-5 INTERNAL_**.

Biting his lip, he took a fortifying swallow of high-quality kanar, a bottle left in his quarters found after Garak had left to return to his homeworld. 

Firming his mouth and his hands, he typed, **Cardassia Prime, 24 standard days; Secondary Contact: Under-Legate Elim Garak, Cardassian Union, Ministry of Reconstruction/UFP Relief; SF Comms: UFP Relief Station Base #003.**

 _Garak will be contacted automatically_ , Julian thought. He allowed himself a smile, finishing his kanar. Perhaps he would even forgive Julian for suggesting Vulcan speculative fiction as their first read together in far too long.

He submitted the leave request and stood, stretching. He'd have to find those trousers Garak hated, the ones he called "the colour of misery and the texture of sandy paper, honestly, my dear, _do better_." Perhaps Garak would think them more appealing if they were left on his floor.

**Author's Note:**

> “And what would humans be without love?"
> 
>  _RARE_ , said Death.
> 
> ― Terry Pratchett, _Sourcery_


End file.
